The artificial resurrection: Genesis and genetics in Blade Runner 2049

In this sequel, moral absolutes have succumbed to corporate interests and brutal pragmatism. The film poses uncomfortable questions for a culture whose prosperity is maintained artificially and unsustainably through abortion, exploitation and war, and whose divorce of sex from procreation is slowly but surely drifting into a demographic winter.

The power of science fiction, and what’s positive about it, is that you’re able to experience the worst-case scenario without actually having to live it. (Actor Ryan Gosling, who plays Officer “K”)

(Warning: The following analysis contains spoilers for both Blade Runner films.)

Released in 1982, the original Blade Runner confronted audiences with a stark depiction of a future that was disturbingly plausible and depressingly tangible. The fact that its pacing was unhurried, focussing on ideas more than characters, and was told through a disorienting hybrid of genres, made it a difficult pill to swallow at first viewing.

However, seeds were planted in the imaginations of a fertile few. More than three decades later, it is difficult to think of a movie that has shaped the world we live in and how we view that world to the same degree as Ridley Scott’s box office bomb. His vision is self-consciously postmodern, exposing the transcendence offered by technology as a scam. In this moody, dystopian prophecy, where nothing is original and everything is derived, progress and degeneration can be difficult to tell apart. Even worse, the difference between them becomes merely a matter of opinion, since moral absolutes have succumbed entirely to corporate interests and brutal pragmatism. The code of the street is now the code of humanity: survival at all costs.

About me

Mike Bull is a graphic designer who lives and works in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. His passion is understanding and teaching the Bible, and he writes occasionally for Theopolis Institute in Birmingham AL, USA.